Category: Church Planting

“We have never sought to hinder the uprising of other churches from our midst or in our neighborhood. It is with cheerfulness that we dismiss our twelves, our twenties, our fifties, to form other churches. We encourage our members to leave us to found other churches; nay, we seek to persuade them to do it. We ask them to scatter throughout the land to become the goodly seed which God shall bless. I believe that so long as we do this we shall prosper. I have marked other churches that have adopted the other way, and they have not succeeded.”

God despises pride. Pride usually leads into a terrible fall. Only Satan can convince us that we, by our own strength, have accomplished anything good spiritually. If through our talents, gifts, and opportunities anything spiritually good has been accomplished, we must always give God the glory. From whom did we secure our talents? Who has ultimately arranged our opportunities? Who is the only One who can open men’s hearts?

Wednesday night, I announced to our church family that God was leading me to plant a church in Los Angeles county. It was very difficult to stand before people that we have loved and served with for the past 8 years and announce that we were leaving. Yet, we are confident that God is leading us to take this drastic step.

How it Began

In college, one of my roommates, Thomas Ross, encouraged me to pray about planting a church in California. I did start praying, and God opened the door for me to go to California the summer before my senior year. I was convinced then that God was leading me to move to California. After graduation, I served as an assistant pastor at Ambassador Baptist Church in Fresno, CA. At the time, we planned to plant a church out of ABC. God had other plans & redirected us to Arizona.